Xref: utzoo sci.lang:7070 comp.cog-eng:1757 sci.psychology:3186 sci.philosophy.tech:3173 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!ccut!kogwy!new1!roger From: roger@zuken.co.jp (Roger Meunier) Newsgroups: sci.lang,comp.cog-eng,sci.psychology,sci.philosophy.tech Subject: Re: Computer Languages and the Sapir/Whorf hypothesis Message-ID: Date: 24 Aug 90 21:33:29 GMT References: <5137@munnari.oz.au> Sender: news@new1.zuken.co.jp Followup-To: sci.lang Organization: ZUKEN Inc. Yokohama, JAPAN Lines: 39 In-reply-to: jfl@munnari.oz.au's message of 21 Aug 90 04:52:57 GMT In article <5137@munnari.oz.au> jfl@munnari.oz.au (John Lenarcic) writes: >( Briefly stated, the hypothesis is : > " Language shapes the way we think, > and determines what we can think about. " ) I can't direct you to any studies on the subject, but from the content of some of the other posts, I don't think this is *too* out of line... When I was studying ancient Greek, I was reading in the text about how Greek evolved from Sanskrit, in particular about the evolution of cases and prepositions/adverbs. The discussion revolved around how the language evolved based on common usage. In other words, the language changed and became more *streamlined* to express thoughts in a more "manageable" fashion. If this is the case, then the thought process dictated the grammar, not the other way around. Ways were *developed* to express new thoughts, or to express thoughts more concisely. With programming languages it's the same. If you have a *clear* idea of what you want a computer system to do, you can find a language construct to perform it, or use existing constructs to derive a new one. I'll admit that only knowing a language which does not easily allow such derivation can limit the horizons of a programmer. I remember when I had to do bit manipulation in COBOL; COBOL was not designed to do such gymnastics, but it is logically possible to implement bit shifting. I wouldn't want to try to express EVERY construct in COBOL; there's only so much my feeble mind can handle. But even COBOL can be used as a base to express constructs which take only one statement of C code... I don't think that language inherently limits the thought process; thinking can be so abstract that *no* language can capture the fulness of it. But language certainly inhibits the *transmission* of these ideas; just thinking about all the ways my post is going to be interpretted makes my hair stand on end! -- Roger Meunier @ Zuken, Inc. Yokohama, Japan (roger@zuken.co.jp)